It was raining cats and dogs so after a purifying lunch at Quintessence (which, by the way, despite its hippyish look and strange smell, is a great place to eat) we decided to go and relax with a massage. Juvenex was not our first choice. Lilly and Raoul was, but unfortunately it was fully booked. There is certainly a wow factor in walking into a rundown building in Manhattan, getting into an old elevator and stepping into a large, well-used spa, but lets get it straight: it looks nothing like its pictures. It’s more like an oversize bathroom with hot tubs and mysterious rooms everywhere. The one girl at the reception desk was probably Russian or Middle European, everybody else was Asian, probably Korean. One of them handed us two bathrobes. The first one was clearly not meant for me as I could have easily used it as a glove. The second one was larger but still not large enough. It barely covered the unmentionables (the ones on the front, while hugging the one on the back like a second skin). I started getting a little anxious. I had to wear the robe and parade around clutching a dangling towel to cover mes miseres. For a moment I thought they had done it on purpose. There were bigger ladies there and they all (well, both of them) seemed to have large enough robes. Not white robes, blue robes. Hello! I need a BLUE robe! First of all, there is absolutely nothing relaxing about being bossed around and directed from one station to the next. First, the shower (one of those open-plan nightmares where you might shampoo in a dandily manner but certainly not scrub your vajayjay), then the sauna (a gazillion degrees in a tomb-like structure, I could not stop thinking of those poor deluded seekers who died in a sweat box in Arizona). The ladies even insisted on the jacuzzi where we were to jump in butt naked and join another couple of happy soakers. I only had one word for that: I-don’t-think-so. Truth be told, I brought some of the humiliation upon myself. Stupidly, in clear act of self-hatred, I choose to go to the spa with my best-bodied girlfriend, so tiny and cute and tight you just feel vomiting (you know who you are, you bitch!) . On the elevator from the 6th to the 5th floor, while I was praying that nobody, absolutely nobody was on the other side of the door when it opened, my masseuse was stroking my face and admiring my baby skin and blue eyes. It has happened to me before, and not just once, so my non-pc assumption is that all Koreans have a fetish with piggy-colored skin. They stare at me and get very agitated, chanting “oh! pleety pleety” over and over. I have to be careful at nail salons, my beauty can be very distracting. The massage itself was, well, brutal. I love massages, my idea of perfect happiness is going about my life with a personal masseur following me everywhere and rubbing my back every time I happen to stop or sit down, and I love them hard. No light strokes for me. Those are for sissies. Still, I think there is a fine line between the pain/pleasure of a deep massage and the unbearable agony of iron thumbs methodically breaking down your body. At Juvenex the hole on the massage bed is there for you to hide your facial contortions. You quickly learn to slide down the bed to bury your face and muffle your screams. I am embarrassed to say I paid dearly for this torture, both in hard-earned dollars and persisting soreness. So let me put it in writing: Lilly and Raoul, Graceful Services, I’ll never ever betray you again.
